Disgusting move. But is it really any wonder that a company that sees its customers as mindless click-bots to be monetized would also see its employees as expendable fat to be cut loose with no prior warning?

I wonder. Were the decision makers at this company really this short sighted? Or did they know they overreached, with a flimsy business model no less, and the goal was to make as much money as possible in the short term? To pump up their personal fortunes in the huge bubble they took the company through, and now they will retire with their newfound wealth? I'm asking. As an outsider looking in, I really don't know.

How does their stock even have any remaining value? The promise of their real-money online gambling venture?

People who shorted it months ago eventually have to buy shares when their contract hits its endpoint. Even after a company Chapter 7's and announces shareholders won't get anything that's enough to keep it churning on penny stock exchanges for a while.

Zynga's still in business; and cheap enough that optimistic people are still buying the really cheap shares in the hope they turn around. I'd call it a high risk move; but if they do recover well it will pay off by a large factor too.

I may be behind the curve on social media, but how can anybody at Zynga think that it's the right way to inform somebody - at any level - that they've lost their job?

If it's true, that's pathetic.

This seems to be pretty common with badly run companies. There were tons of stories during the first .com crash of people showing up for work one day only to find the doors locked and chained and the CEO nowhere to be found.

Ever witness a Zynga employee introduce themselves at a party? It's really painful. Listeners wince when they hear where the person works, and get treated to pre-emptive justifications/apologies as to why they work there and that they're working on some "really cool non-Farmville stuff."

It is not a good sign when your employees have to apologize to others for working there.

Disgusting move. But is it really any wonder that a company that sees its customers as mindless click-bots to be monetized would also see its employees as expendable fat to be cut loose with no prior warning?

Zynga is dying, and fast. I figure that we'll probably be hearing stories about how Zynga neglected to actually pay most employees (while the top execs get fat "severance packages" as a means of plundering the last bits of value on this sinking ship) for weeks leading up to its demise. At least these folks get to start the job search early instead of being misled into thinking they still have a bit more time in the working (and paying) world.

Man, there have been some poorly run big companies, but this one is in the running for a top 10 list of ones that weren't run by purposefully corrupt people. This is like the corporate equivalent of some lower income person winning the lottery, going crazy with the money, and ending up even more poor just a few years later. In this case, Zynga had a few "successful" games, almost by accident, and then proved that they weren't actually fit for the success that came to them.

I may be behind the curve on social media, but how can anybody at Zynga think that it's the right way to inform somebody - at any level - that they've lost their job?

If it's true, that's pathetic.

OMGPOP was a terrible company that was close to shutting down before the Draw Something fad caused Zynga to overpay for them. I don't have much sympathy for anyone from OMGPOP, especially a vice president.

Disgusting move. But is it really any wonder that a company that sees its customers as mindless click-bots to be monetized would also see its employees as expendable fat to be cut loose with no prior warning?

When Zynga's troubles first began, I could see it being a disgusting move. But at this stage in the game, anybody with even the slightest modicum of ability was probably exploring other positions at companies that don't suck.

While they certainly overpaid for OMGPOP, dividing the purchase price by the number of days that the company existed is a terrible way to represent the loss of that investment. What was the operating profit and loss for that business segment? If Draw Something (and all subsequent games from that studio) really made no money at all, then the loss is even larger than 0.5M$ / day since there's the operating cost of the studio. But I have to assume they got some money out of it - though based on everything else, I guess maybe they didn't have a strategy there either beyond "good will" accrual.

i smell that bad social media bubble a-poppin'. i don't know how more people don't see in today's "social media" craze so many of the hallmarks of the dot-com boom; when everything with a dot-com after it was showered with assloads of cash without hardly any questions. we've got a similar situation today. slap "social" on pretty much anything and watch the zomgCa$h money pour in. think about all the sweet value those "social media consultants" bring in! yay! --> the commercial for Jim's Tile Emporium has a twitter and facebook and instagram and linkedin icon on it. so... we can go on there and chat about Jim's Tile Emporium? how exactly does that drive any real business value?

anyway, that's my roundabout way of casting a pox on zynga/OMGPOP's houses. OMGPOP had the benefit of being oh-so-extra-socially-relevant to the teens and online peoples because it HAS OMG IN THE NAME! Brilliant! i'm sure that got them a few extra million. it probably isn't all that great for our economy right now but i really hope the social media bubble bursts sooner rather than later. better to cauterize the wound before it goes septic (too late?). you can only go for so long promising investors that all those millions of sweet, sweet subscriber lists, and sometimes dubious microtransactions, will someday justify the influx of billions of capital. hopefully OMGPOP's epic fail is a harbinger of things to come.

I can't say this is overly surprising, considering I haven't played that game in months and Zynga's handling of their business in general. Still, you have to feel bad for the day-to-day people who worked there and had nothing to do with the failure.

My thoughts on the issue:1. What the heck was Zynga thinking buying OMGPOP for $200M2. Well, perhaps DrawSomething will get some more decent words that people can actually draw instead of writing out a person's name, what group/band they play for or some of the person's songs. (Drawing can be tough, drawing people is even tougher.)3. Perhaps DrawSomething will get some of its bugs fixed... but at the cost of increased advertising...

Editor: "[of its]" is a mis-edit; the quote was correct without that addition, and incorrect with it. You could arguably replace "acquisition' with "[acquired]", but even that's probably not necessary.

Do we really need a gaming consultant to teach us how to divide? Regardless, they're wrong, Zynga paid $180m for OMGPOP (not that it makes it much better, but still, if you're going to throw it in there it might as well be right).

It does kind of make sense though, Draw Something was the biggest game on Facebook, right on Zynga's turf. And there's the problem that if they don't buy them, someone else will, plus Zynga generally works best at trying a lot of things and milking them quickly, although I doubt anyone foresaw the huge drop off it would have.

But Zynga made $1.3b in revenue for the year ending Dec 31, shoveling crappy games into app stores and facebook. They're doing something right (from a financial standpoint), but they spent half of that doing R&D, which is huge for a small game company.

Clearly the level of ineptitude and waste at Zynga boggles the mind (and resolves my confusion yesterday as to how something like that could happen), but to automatically assume that anybody who ever takes a vacation is automatically a waste of the company's money is going a bit far. People aren't slaves.

The important thing here, outside of the handling of personnel, is that Zynga has yet to determine how to acquire, onboard, and operate other gaming companies while also failing to grow its own existing business. That should be a massive red alert for anyone seriously considering them as a solid company or, worse, a solid investment.

Clearly the level of ineptitude and waste at Zynga boggles the mind (and resolves my confusion yesterday as to how something like that could happen), but to automatically assume that anybody who ever takes a vacation is automatically a waste of the company's money is going a bit far. People aren't slaves.

Of course. Vacations are great. However, cruises around Italy aren't cheap.Therefore I deduce that this person was well paid for results that scrape the bottom of the barrel.All that Zynga money that just vanished went somewhere, and of its destinations was apparently an Italian cruise.

Clearly the level of ineptitude and waste at Zynga boggles the mind (and resolves my confusion yesterday as to how something like that could happen), but to automatically assume that anybody who ever takes a vacation is automatically a waste of the company's money is going a bit far. People aren't slaves.

Of course. Vacations are great. However, cruises around Italy aren't cheap.Therefore I deduce that this person was well paid for results that scrape the bottom of the barrel.All that Zynga money that just vanished went somewhere, and of its destinations was apparently an Italian cruise.

1) Italian cruises aren't that expensive. Certainly within the means of a mid to higher level manager at most companies.2) How she spends her money is none of your business.3) If she'd heard it while vacationing at the International Space Station, then you might have a point.

Clearly the level of ineptitude and waste at Zynga boggles the mind (and resolves my confusion yesterday as to how something like that could happen), but to automatically assume that anybody who ever takes a vacation is automatically a waste of the company's money is going a bit far. People aren't slaves.

Of course. Vacations are great. However, cruises around Italy aren't cheap.Therefore I deduce that this person was well paid for results that scrape the bottom of the barrel.All that Zynga money that just vanished went somewhere, and of its destinations was apparently an Italian cruise.

1) Italian cruises aren't that expensive. Certainly within the means of a mid to higher level manager at most companies.2) How she spends her money is none of your business.

You're right. Once a failing company takes investors' money and pays it out to senior executives, then no one can say anything about it, because it's their money now, and it's no one's business whether they deserved it or what they do with it.